Posted on 10/19/2011 9:01:38 AM PDT by decimon
An archaeological excavation at Poggio Colla, the site of a 2,700-year-old Etruscan settlement in Italy's Mugello Valley, has turned up a surprising and unique find: two images of a woman giving birth to a child.
Researchers from the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which oversees the Poggio Colla excavation site some 20 miles northeast of Florence, discovered the images on a small fragment from a ceramic vessel that is more than 2,600 years old.
The images show the head and shoulders of a baby emerging from a mother represented with her knees raised and her face shown in profile, one arm raised, and a long ponytail running down her back.
The excavation is a project of Southern Methodist University, Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in collaboration with The Open University in Milton Keynes, England.
The identification of the scene was made by Phil Perkins, an authority on Etruscan bucchero and professor of archaeology at The Open University.
"We were astounded to see this intimate scene; it must be the earliest representation of childbirth in Western art," said Perkins. "Etruscan women are usually represented feasting or participating in rituals, or they are goddesses. Now we have to solve the mystery of who she is and who her child is."
The Etruscans were the first settlers of Italy, long before the Roman Empire. They built the first cities, were a conduit for the introduction of Greek culture to the Romans, and were known for their art, agriculture, fine metalworking and commerce. They occupied Italy for the first millennium B.C., but were conquered by the Romans and eventually became absorbed into their empire.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.smu.edu ...
Snarky, snarky. And when may we see examples of your art? That comment is unworthy of you, decimon.
FTA: The fragment was excavated by William Nutt, who is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington and who is legally blind.
Preserving the privacy....
Having stared at the image for a few minutes, I still fail to see a woman giving birth.
Her body is facing us. She’s seated or squatting. Her right hand is between her legs. Her left arm is crooked vertically.
Looks like a Christmas tree to me.
Still queasy after all these years....
If that’s a woman giving birth, then where, pray tell,is her bosom?
I don’t see it.
He rubbed his hands all over it.
...and the Phoenicians founded Carthage.
I believe they also founded Cadiz, on the southwestern shore of Spain. But what really might be the case there, as maybe in the founding of Carthage, is there already existed a trading settlement of some sort, a village or small city, made up of local tribes.
You are correct about Cadiz. Scipio Africanus conquered it from Carthage IIRC. Plus, as you know, given geography building sites usually were continuously used because their utility was so great and building materials were present.
When I saw the headline I imagined a woman shaking a fist at her husband, screaming, “you bastard, you did this to me!”
What did she expect to happen when her husband let her eat in the same room? Geez.
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